One of our absolute favourite features last year (included of course on our Best of 2019 playlist) was when trap-rap-pop streaming-record-shatterer Post Malone featured an artist, new to many when it came out, Ozzy Osbourne, on his track Take What You Want from his third studio album Hollywood's Bleeding.

From Rock Feed's YouTube video: "These Post Malone Fans Think Ozzy Osbourne Is A New Pop Singer".

Post Malone is perhaps most noted to have become incredibly successful incredibly quickly (he was born in 1995). Many attribute a part of his success to streamlining what 'a normal song-structure' is in the era of playlists with amazing results. What he does is he opens on the chorus and keeps the songs short, the melody accessible which is in line with his general appearance which is perhaps a bit... disheveled? In other words, it's #relatable and #singalongable.

His formula that "he wears on his sleeve" on making his songs so goddamn catchy seems to be working rather well as four of his songs have over a billion streams on Spotify alone. Further, he's able to dance the line between pop and hip-hop even to alternative in a way that gets him plays on all of those radio stations. Talk about a cross-over.

This live performance of rcokstar (one of the four in the over a billion streams club, also nominated for a Grammy) is a brilliant illustration of this. See how within 2 seconds you know what song it is. There's no Queen-style super long build-y intros and performative drama, he gets straight to the point and his voice is at a register where it's impossible not to sing along, shout along, jump along. Which is exactly what the 20,000 people attending his show at the Tacoma Dome in Seattle can be seen doing in the video.

Point being, the man has some clout. If we take a queue from a recent headline "The Post Malone concert in Hershey, explained for Baby Boomers" his main audience seems to be the younger generation, Gen Z as they call it now. This article from QZ actually has some data to back up that Post Malone has almost no name recognition with older generations at all, just none.

Based on these fan-reactions from (presumably the young'uns) that they think Post Malone is doing this unknown artist a solid, this Ozzy Osbourne guy, it seems like the opposite is also true. Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness as he has been known for decades has a career that's older than probably Post Malone's parents are. His seminal album he released with his band Black Sabbath that is by many considered to have started heavy metal as a genre is 50 years old now. So no wonder someone born this century just quite simply never came across it. How would they have anyway?

Just to put it in context, for someone born in the year 2000, it came out 30 years before they were born. For someone born in 1990, that's like the Soundtrack for the Sound of Music. For someone born in 1980, that's like whatever music changed the scene in 1950, before Elvis Presley when folks like Nat King Cole were dominating the charts.

Granted a quick Google search before tweeting would have perhaps saved some embarrassment (not just true in this particular instance we might add) and who knows, they might even have learned something – or like Chris Jericho put it "learn your musical history you [explitive]", which is hard to disagree with.

In any case, Post Malone and Ozzy Osbourne decided to collaborate on one of our favorite singles of last year "Take What You Want" which also features rapper Travis Scott. Whether it came about because they just met and love each other's music or deliberately to expose baby boomers to Post Malone and Gen Zs to Ozzy Osbourne, well that's exactly what happened. And the result is just stellar.

We're particularly awed by this dynamic duo's live performance.

So apparently it was Post Malone who has admired Ozzy Osbourne his entire life and asked him to be on his track. Ozzy had never heard of him at that point but still agreed. And he claims that being on this track with Posty (as he's endearingly known by his fans) got him back in the game, and his new album Ordinary Man just came out. And in a pleasing symmetry it includes a track featuring who, but our good friend Posty. And it is also a banger. 

One would think that hip-hop and metal are two wildly different genres of music, but they maybe aren't. Both appreciate a good shock-factor, a good loud live show (which we love), and a certain irreverence to the mainstream and just fully letting go and you know, jumping around in mosh-pits etc.

In the same interview, Ozzy states how much he missed making music and how grateful he is for being back in that way. This follows his unfortunate cancellation of his 2019 Farewell Tour which he said he was in great shape for, when unfortunately then had to get canceled due to a major health setback.

He says the initial collaboration with Post Malone got him out of his head, out of the sofa, and to work. The producer, Andrew Watt asked him if he wanted to make an album, to which he said why not. He said that the best music is made from a point of pain, which he certainly had plenty to go around in his recovery process. And the man is not wrong, Ordinary Man the album, released after his 70th birthday is great. 

No tour has been announced yet, but as he says in this interview on Good Morning America, he's craving to go back on the road and continue to perform for his fans.

What a legend. If being featured on a track with Post Malone exposes him to a new audience, that's great but the man already has such loyal following from his career over the decades. It's hard to imagine an artist who's managed to maintain as impactful on pop-culture over such a long stretch of time as Ozzy Osbourne has. See his daughter Kelly's account of the experience in this lovely little video from the red carpet at the AMAs.